Arien's POV
---
Morning came like an apology —
Soft wind.
Faint light.
And birdsong that didn't belong to this world anymore.
The kind of morning that tried too hard to pretend things were okay. As if it could erase the sulfur and ash still buried in the ground. As if that crack in the sky never happened. As if demons didn't know my name.
I sat near the cliffside overlooking what used to be the western shrine's reflecting pool. It had dried up weeks ago. Now it was just a bowl of dust and melted stone, crows circling above like patient undertakers.
My hands rested on my knees. Palms open.
The glyph seal on my left hand still pulsed faintly — a soft, almost soothing heat.
But my bones knew better.
That warmth was a warning.
> "Shepherd of the last flame."
That's what the demon had called me this time.
Not "little shepherd."
Not "girl."
Not "child playing war."
Shepherd of the last flame.
Like it knew something I didn't.
Like it was waiting.
---
"Arien!"
Jisoo's voice cut across the wind like a cracked bell. Urgent. Controlled, but only just.
I turned and rose to my feet in one smooth motion. My joints protested. My body still remembered yesterday's Pulse Training — even if my will pretended it didn't.
Jisoo skidded to a stop in front of me. "We've got a problem."
"When don't we?" I said.
He didn't laugh. "West ridge. Something moved past the watcher glyph."
My blood went cold.
"Is the seal ring intact?"
"For now. But you should see it."
I was already moving before he finished speaking. Boots hitting the broken earth. Sword hilt brushing my hip with every step.
---
We reached the western edge of camp in less than five minutes. The glyph shimmered in front of us — a fragile wall of gold-threaded light stitched between two dead trees. The air buzzed faintly.
Beyond it?
Footprints.
No. Not footprints.
Clawmarks.
Each one was as long as my forearm. Three-pronged. Twisted like tree roots rotted by fire. They weren't pressed into the dirt — they were seared into it. Like something had burned its presence into the world.
They pulsed. Slowly.
Breathing.
"This wasn't a scout," I whispered. "It was a message."
Jisoo stared. "From who?"
I didn't answer. I already knew.
Not who.
What.
---
That night, I gathered the core students — the last dozen who still looked at me like I had answers instead of cracks. We sat around a map drawn in ash and salt. The boundary seals. The watch points. Our food rations. The route forward.
"We hold here until sunrise," I said. "One more day."
"What if they come back?" asked Hana. Her voice didn't tremble, but her eyes did.
"Then we hold the line," I said.
"Again?" Jisoo asked softly. "You said that yesterday. And the day before that."
"I'll say it every day until we move."
A long silence.
Finally, someone asked, "And when we do move… what's next?"
I pressed my fingers against the dirt map. Tapped a location only I could sense — east, near the broken river basin. A feeling had been pulling me there. Not a voice. Not a vision.
A weight.
"I think there's something waiting," I said. "Something buried. Or locked."
"Another relic?" Hana asked.
"No."
A pause.
Then I said it: "A memory."
---
At midnight, when the others slept, I stood alone beneath the old cedar tree.
The one that somehow hadn't burned. Not even when the ash storm passed through.
I held the mirror again — the cracked one from the temple ruins. Its surface flickered between reflections and visions. I wasn't looking for my face.
I was looking for hers.
She appeared in fragments. Red light. Stone steps. A mountain crowned in glowing scripture that floated like embers in reverse. At its peak — a sword lodged in molten earth.
Long. Alive. Watching.
The Blade of Emberbone.
> "Come," the whisper said from within the glass.
"Come and remember who you were…
Before you bled yourself hollow."
I snapped the mirror shut.
Tucked it away.
And breathed out the fear.
Because I'd heard voices before. But this one didn't threaten me.
It remembered me.
---
Dawn broke, and we moved.
The seal ring collapsed behind us with a shimmer — like an exhale. Like it was glad we lasted this long.
We walked in silence. Through valleys stripped of life. Past bones charred black by glyphfire. Past places where shadows still twitched, even without bodies to cast them.
But we walked.
Because I led.
And because they followed.
Not out of faith.
Out of need.
---
Three hours in, the ground shifted.
A glyph trap burst from beneath us — not one of mine.
I raised my hand. "Form a line!"
But the blast wave came too fast. Scorching light. Screaming dirt. Half my students thrown to the ground.
Then the laughter began.
Not deep.
Not monstrous.
Mocking.
I turned toward the source.
And saw her.
---
She stepped from the flame like a ghost draped in memory. Like someone had dug into my past and ripped out the weakest part of me just to mock me with it.
She wore my face — the one before the pain. Before the flame. Before the screams in the sky and the ash in my lungs.
Her eyes were wide with fear.
Her hands shook.
But her mouth grinned.
> "You can't save everyone, Arien."
"You'll break."
"And when you do… I'll be waiting."
I didn't speak.
I didn't blink.
I stepped forward and ripped the bandage from my back.
The glyph branded there wasn't mine.
Not originally.
It had appeared after the demon spoke. After the mirror glowed. After I bled beneath the cedar tree alone.
A single flame ignited between my shoulder blades — a burning sigil in the shape of a sword pointing down, rooted to my spine like a spine of its own.
The Shepherd's Blade.
---
She recoiled.
Her eyes — my eyes — flickered with fear.
And I understood.
She was real.
But she was dying.
Because I had changed.
Because the me she came from — the scared, uncertain, desperate Arien — was gone.
Burned away.
"I'm not afraid of breaking," I said.
And when the blade flared to life behind me, casting a pillar of light into the gray sky, I added:
> "I'm afraid of what happens if I stop."
She screamed.
Faded into flame.
And vanished like smoke torn by wind.
---
Later that night, I stood guard again.
Watching the stars flicker through holes in the world.
The students slept. Curled close. Dreaming of homes they might never return to.
And I…
I stood still.
Flame on my back.
Weight in my chest.
Hope like a knife in my hands.
> I wasn't chosen by fate.
I wasn't chosen at all.
> I became this.
Not because I wanted to.
But because someone had to.